Chapter 3
Ever
A small part of me found it comforting, knowing he was close by, now that it had been a year and he still hadn’t proven himself to be dangerous to me yet.
It was reassuring, like he was some deranged guardian angel.
It was a fucked-up notion, considering my past. But the malevolence I’d felt then was absent now.
A year ago, when I first felt someone watching me from the streets, I’d been terrified and called the police, who responded two hours later to the two-bedroom bungalow I’d been renting.
The officer, a middle-aged man who’d been in law enforcement long enough to look bored when responding to a call, did a quick search outside the perimeter of the house, which consisted of him swinging a small Maglite around like a pendulum and triumphantly declaring my space to be serial killer-free before departing.
He’d most likely chalked up my fear to some sort of female hysteria, blaming my uterus for my not wanting to be murdered in my sleep by yet another man society had let slip through the cracks.
Stones crunched under my feet as I approached my front porch, where I noticed a small package sitting by the door.
Mystery packages had become as commonplace as sensing my stalker lurking in the shadows.
What would it be this time? What seemingly innocuous token that was something I actually needed had he sent me today?
Heart pounding, I glanced behind my shoulder, noticing nothing but an empty street, and then scooped up the package with one hand while unlocking the front door with the other and quickly scooting inside the house, making sure to lock the door.
Once inside, I tossed the curiously light box on the kitchen table and called Katy.
“Hello, you lucky bitch, you,” she answered.
“You’re still salty that you didn’t hook up with Kylo Ren, I see.”
“More like while my bff was getting her insides rearranged in my guest bedroom, I went to bed alone and unsatisfied.”
“Gee, welcome to the club.” I propped the phone down on the table and sent a video call request to Katy, watching as her image popped up on my screen, messy bun and all.
“Look, it was my party, and I can literally cry if I want to. Although I am happy for you. Cheers to dusting off your vagina.” She lifted a glass of water, bringing it to her lips to take a sip.
“So, I received another package today.”
“Another one? From your stalker? Jesus, Ever. You get railed by some masked God at my party over the weekend, and today your stalker sends you a gift. What is this life of yours?”
“You’re not supposed to want a stalker, Katy.” I snatched a pair of scissors from my kitchen drawer and sat down at the table, resting the package in my lap.
“All of the dark romance books I’ve read have led me to believe otherwise.”
“Yeah, well, that’s fiction, not real life.”
“True, but sometimes fiction can be rooted in reality.”
“My life has already been stranger than fiction.” I snorted, piercing the packing tape with the blade of the scissors. “At this point, I’d prefer to embrace normalcy.”
“You should start doing stalker unboxing videos on TikTok.” Katy laughed. “I think they would go viral. Maybe you’d find out who the mystery man is.”
“Honestly, I don’t know if I want to know at this point. As long as it isn’t—” I paused, allowing the anxiety that inherently washed over me every time I thought about Travis to pass.
“Ever, are you okay?” Katy asked, her tone more serious. “He’s not been released, has he?”
“No.” My voice came out as more of a whisper, and I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch to erase the images of the man from my former life. “I checked this morning. He’s still incarcerated. They would have called me if he’d been released.”
“And you’re one-hundred percent certain he isn’t the one sending these packages to you?”
“Yes. He can’t. I’ve called Victim Services, and they assured me it isn’t him.”
Katy nodded. “Okay, well, as long as the gifts aren’t creepy, then I say roll with it.”
My eyes traveled to the journal I’d received a month ago.
It had been the last gift he’d sent me until now.
Before that, I’d unboxed a Keurig, a couple of romance novels I’d had on my Tbr, a roadside emergency kit, a pair of winter boots, bath oils, and the pepper spray that hung on the keychain attached to my house key, just to name a few of the items.
“I mean, I would kind of call knowing my exact shoe size creepy, but I guess—” I gasped, springing to my feet from the chair, my heart pounding as the box fell from my knees to the floor.
“Oh my God, Ever. What is it? What happened?”
Body shaking and my ears beginning to ring, I crouched down to the floor to retrieve the contents of the package: a lone peacock feather. Hand trembling, I picked the feather up by the quill.
Fuck. Could it be?
It appeared to be the right shape. The right size. The right color.
“Ever? Ever, seriously, if you don’t talk to me, I’m going to come over there right now. Well, maybe not right now. But as soon as this episode of The Vampire Diaries is over, I will be hauling ass in your direction.”
“I’m okay.” I slowly rose to my feet. “Physically, anyway, I think.”
“Oh, thank God.” Katy breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Because I’m in my sweatpants and I’m pretty sure my ass has molded itself to this couch. But if you need me, totally there, babe.”
“I think I had sex with my stalker.”
Katy sat bolt upright on the couch, her eyes widening as her attention was stolen away from Damon Salvatore. “What? Jesus, Ever. What did that psycho send to you?” Hand still trembling, I held the feather up to the phone, watching as Katy’s mouth fell. “Holy shit. Is that what I think it is?”
“I think so.”
“Motherfucker. That is diabolical.” Katy squinted as though trying to take in every last detail of the feather she could through the phone.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean you boinked your actual stalker.
I mean, maybe he just saw you banging the masked mystery man through the window and wants you to know he knows. ”
“Yes, because that’s so much better.” I snorted. “Not only is my stalker unhinged, but now he’s pissed off, too.”
“Unhinged and pissed off make for a great combination in the bedroom,” Katy said so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t help but stare at the phone, waiting for her to elaborate.
“Okay, so what if your stalker just saw you in your costume and sent the feather to you to tell you he liked it or something?”
“Wait…” I said, my voice trailing off as I sprang out of the chair once more, hiking it to my bedroom at the end of the hall.
Balled up in the corner of my closet, far past the condition to ever return it, lay my costume from the party.
Stomach churning, I snatched the disheveled article of clothing and ran back to the kitchen table to inspect the feathers.
“Shit.” My heart sank as I held up the feather my stalker had sent to me, comparing it to the ones in the costume.
“It’s a match.” My gaze trailed up to Katy, who stared at me in as much disbelief as I felt.
“The man I slept with at your party, he pulled a feather out of my costume and, uh, used it in ways I never thought to use a feather.”
“Way to rub it in my face,” Katy grumbled.
“That’s not where he was rubbing it,” I smirked.
“You just keep twisting that knife, don’t you?”
I inspected the costume, noticing it was missing at least two feathers instead of the one I knew the man had taken. “He must have taken another one when I was, uh…”
“Coming down from your post-orgasm high,” Katy muttered.
“It was multiple orgasms, actually.”
Katy stared daggers at me. “So, your stalker is some gorgeous, buff sex god.”
“Damnit.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I banged my stalker, and I liked it.”
“Calm down, Katy Perry, it isn’t that bad. When you think about it, you’re pretty lucky. Most stalkers are not at all fuckable. You’ve won the lottery with yours. Hot stalkers are only a thing in romance books—never in real life.”
“I didn’t even see his face to know what he looks like.”
“Ev, with that body and those bedroom skills, who gives a shit what his face looks like. He’s hot. Trust me.”
“And you have no idea who he could possibly be? You know everyone, right? Who did you invite?”
“Well, first of all, literally everyone is invited. You know this. It’s not like I send out fancy calligraphy-filled invitations.
People show up and they bring friends. No one signs in at the door.
Secondly, if I knew someone who matched your stalker boyfriend’s description, don’t think I wouldn’t have already had him scoped out.
My best guess is that he either came with someone or he came by himself.
The latter seems like the most likely option. ”
“Is there anyone we can ask? Someone has to have an idea, right?”
“What was he wearing again?”
“All black, except for a red pair of sneakers.”
“What about the mask?”
“Also black. But it had red eyes and red designs that kind of jutted out to create a face of sorts.”
“Hmm.” Katy tapped her lip with her index finger. “That seems like a pretty particular design. I’ll have Jem look into it. Maybe she’ll have an idea.”
“I hope so.”
“Don’t worry. If we can’t find him, I’m sure he won’t be showing his face again somewhere else.”
“Very funny.”
“Do you need me to come over?”
“No. I think I’ll be okay.”
“Wonderful. I’m going to get back to Damon now. Keep your chin up. If the three of us put our heads together, we’ll figure this out.”
“I hope so.”
“Just remember that if he has a brother, you’d better hook a girl up.”
I stood up from the table after ending the call and walked over to the aquarium housing Vincent van Slow, the painted turtle I rescued as a baby from the middle of a roadway when I pulled over to take a picture of a rainbow that had formed over a field of gladiolus.
I’d meant to find a nice pond to release him, but after two hours of venting to my adopted son, I came to the conclusion he knew too much.
Besides, given that he had just been chilling in the middle of the roadway, I figured his decision-making skills were lacking.
Vincent peered up at me from his shell, scooting himself off his rock into the water and swimming over to the side of the aquarium to greet me.
I don’t care what anyone else said, turtles were just as good as any dog, except when it came to defending a house from intruders. They kind of sucked at that.
A shelf underneath the stand, which held up the aquarium, housed a container of pellets. I grabbed the container and held it up, causing Vincent to paddle his little reptile heart out.
“Here you go, Vinny boy,” I said, shaking a handful of pellets into the water and closing the lid as he went to town.
I walked over to the picture window in the living room, overlooking the roadway, almost expecting to see the man I’d met at Katy’s party staring back at me from the road, his red eyes beckoning me toward him.
Even after everything I’d been through, after everything I’d run away from to rebuild my life, I would run to the man without hesitation.
Because as much as I was unsettled, I’d also never been more turned on.